Since we are talking R.S., it has to be what inspired the character.
My WiP is as mechanically constructed as you can get. I realized my character had a half-year where nothing happened between stories, and that got me thinking.
The difficulty here it that because it would be both a sequel and a prequel, I needed the story to have a reason never be reported while still being knock your socks off. Something that could still be shoehorned into later stories with a phrase like "Oops, that's a state secret. Don't repeat that," and not cause a disruption.
(I actually did. You know. Shoehorn that line into a later story, before completing this WiP.)
So what ideas did I throw at the wall?
An invasion of Earth nobody knew about (which comes from five chapters I never continued). My devil-girl had to had to stop it. I wanted to make it useful for ongoing stories by getting the devil-girl back on the main antagonist' radar by my devil-girl inadvertently doing the MA an enormous solid (i.e., saving Her ass).
Check. Check Check.
Didn't quite take off. My devil-girl wasn't biting. What was the story idea missing?
[Bolt speaking:] I spent the last seven years of my life working in a gang as a runner and bearer of bad news, until /she/ decided we were alike and took me along with her as she decapitated the organization. The event did not go without notice by the constabulary she played to get the job done, or by the powers that be. I saved her, she saved me, then I threw a border stone at the most powerful person in the world to save us all.
Looong story.
Every flapping day since, she makes me feel needed. I had lost my freedom and my life in a cycle of blackmail and darkness. I owe her—for changing me, fixing me, freeing me—though she sees me instead as a helpful friend. Together, I help her make a difference /every/ day.
The east coast of the continent in the piedmont over looking a large bay. In terms of what your people know, the powers that be built a large English country estate around me, including the manor house, in order to isolate and train me every waking hour for talents I didn't know I displayed. We had plenty of servants and tenants to teach me about inequality. In retrospect, my being drilled in empathy might have been on purpose and those servants, also, a lesson. Hot breezes from the bay, a days travel east, laden with humidity did not make the location more pleasant. Working out was always in the afternoon and always sweaty. The baths were a pleasant memory. I ran away from my responsibilities when I grew old enough to pass as an adult.
Bolt reflexively tries to avoid confrontation with people more powerful than herself. She'll explain to you how she expects how she thinks the Boss will react, how he will hurt you, how you'll he'll punish you for your temerity. She rarely thinks of solutions to effectuate what's proposed. She's obviously been beat down one too many times.
Around the MC—who rewards good solutions, says what she expects, and backs her people who don't act stupid even when their attempts at solutions fail—Bolt acts less like a kicked puppy.
#PennedPossibilities 139 — If your MC was a genuine psychic for hire, what would be their main specialization? Astral projection, aka soul travel.
Diana Shadowdancer is a shaman in 2023 working on a DARPA project to make soul travel reliable enough that the practitioner can move things like a poltergeist and remember information read or witnessed. Her discovery is that it takes /two/ people working together to do this /and/ there was good reasons that traditional shamans, in every culture, always worked alone. The word "poltergeist" might give you a clue...
This is a concept from a decade ago I just realized I could write as concept short. Consider reading Soulmate?: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/111359427361655491. I will eventually expand it into a science fiction novel.
#PennedPossibilities 130 — What does your villain truly desire? On the other hand, what do they lack?
He wants to win the championship. He wants people to stop dissing him and talking down to him, especially women, and to give his overwhelming strength the respect it deserves. He likes to see the result of the mayhem he can cause reflected in eyes of the people who dare cross him.
He lacks self-knowledge of the limits of his own skills. His ego and testosterone poisoning make it impossible that he might ever learn. The MC, my devil-girl, repeatedly tries to teach him his flaws, however.
I drummed my fingers on the table beside her open grimoires. Not facing the bully, I turned my eyes toward the blonde, taking in her arrogant smile. She'd gotten me to do what she wanted. She held her wand steady, and the tip glowed like hot iron. "And that's all I need to do? I can't believe you're helping me like this after all we've been through..."
The bucket-full of water and me being hit by said bucket falling off the shelf above the door. The vanishing ink pen I used on a test. The worms in my box lunch. Other things. But I was also a T.A. Some responsibilities where inescapable.
I did volunteer to help Jill.
I wanted to laugh at the "we" in that last sentence, but sighed instead. She was predictable. Very predictable. "The mnemonic, the equations, the visualization. Spot on. It balances and your wand indicates that."
"So all I have to do is say what I want to conjure?"
Predictable. I didn't grin. Instead I switched to French, hopeful. "/Tu m'emmerdes avec tes questions!/"†
She blinked. "Merde? Isn't that French for—"
With magic you really need to be specific about where to target a spell affect and what you're asking for. She'd been specific about neither.
Where your wand is pointing is the default. Her's pointed above her head.
The spell understood what she wanted enough that the closest source proved to be the horse stables. I could see it out the dorm room window. The spell mucked every stall.
A load of small round spheres crashed down around her, bouncing off her head and bounding around the room. I squealed reflexively and jumped away.
I doubled over leaning against the door, laughing despite the smell. For her part, the bully sat stunned. Her expression wanted to be a smile. She had succeeded, after all. She also knew she'd been made the fool.
Exiting out the door was the better part of valor. I grabbed the nob.
"/Amélie/," came a growl.
=-=-=-=-=
† "You're so annoying with your questions!" Literally: "You're shitting on me with your questions."
I looked from my embedded thaumaturgy exam at the little man who'd let my people burn. That he'd chosen to save Second City—instead of together with Dryad Woodland—had masked his battlefield choices against the dragonfolk as heroism. He never referred to people like me as Tainted. Not that I'd ever let anybody know I was Folk. I needed no wand because my bones were calcified wood. My wand was fake.
I no longer hated him.
His lack of bigotry was my first clue. Second was whilst he saved Citadel State again and again, the country subtly bled territory, prestige, and the confidence of allies intermittently supported. The last clue was my professor scoffed at the idea of curses. He'd personally removed all books on the subject from the library, yet referred to titles I'd nonetheless found in the library stacks at Royale, our school's rival.
A magical machine you'd embed in an amulet was called a curse when embedded in a person to control them. The General kept an analog clock that he opened in class to explain the term "escapement." The ticking levers and gears beautifully illustrated a reciprocating casting. That it moved "hands" and rang chimes on the hours showed how the magic worked in the watch inked on my wrist. When he taught how to make amulets react to stimuli, it came together. My watch grew visible only when looked at. Alarms tingled. Some people's amulets spoke to them.
I remembered when he'd grown hoarse elaborating on the idea that we act on instincts programmed into us by society. Simply substitute "curse" for "society..."
Though mind control was a capital offense, it wasn't impossible. Clues, clues, clues.
I dismissed he was corrupt. He lived a humble life beyond soldiery and teaching. I concluded he was either bipolar—or fought an internal war against a curse.
I snapped the quill down on the desk, capping the inkwell. A glance confirmed I was alone in the lecture hall. I kicked the box beside my boot. The lid slid aside. Something buzzzzed. The General glanced at his watch, frowning as I descended to the lectern. He reached out a hand. "Taking your time today?"
"Savoring it," I answered and smiled.
What if his clues and omissions were targeted at me? I got top marks in embedding; it seemed natural but also too pat. Had he wanted me to notice he fought an internal struggle against a curse that could recognize him revealing it or fighting it? Was it a trap or was he crying for help?
Was I about to make a fool of myself or get myself killed?
He leafed through the pages, nodding.
I wore short sleeves and simple breeches that couldn't hide a wand. I hid nothing from the curse's sight.
/I'm not a threat,/ I told myself over my racing heart. I hoped he didn't smell me sweating, or the bad odor coming from something I'd purposely stepped in.
When a fly came a-buzzing, I swatted. His eyes followed the insect.
Hands raised, I swiftly brought them beside his temples. I didn't need a wand because I had ten: five fingers on each hand.
I got textbook feedback across the gap between my thumbs and little fingers. I sensed the ticking, then a network of timings that ran across his cranium to envelop his entire skull. Without my "wands" acting like antennae, I'd never have detected it. I jabbed my magic through my index fingers into the primary escapements and through my middle fingers into secondaries, stopping them mid-tick. I'd gotten Amelia to let me practice on her orchestra ear, so it went off like... clockwork.
Though my test papers zigzagged to the floor, the man looked away as if it didn't matter, or that my chest and raised arms didn't block his view. Was he going to let me disassemble the reciprocating escapement? I reexamined the feedback and it dawned on me that his entire skull was likely incised with castings. His head was a complex amulet. Yet... I found the keystone! If I burnt a pencil-width dot right there—
When he coughed, I glanced over. Sweat beaded above his upper lip as he mouthed words.
I read, "I've a sister who's my soulmate."
Innocuous, but I recognized the allusion. I found an antenna in the escapement. He worked not to trigger a link to a second cursed person, or a curse-defense mechanism. That response wouldn't simply be his voice cutting out. He wore his wand in a wrist sheath.
Break the curse?
Risk triggering a linked curse?
Believe him, the flawed hero who'd killed people I knew?
Intuition said— I jerked back my magic and wearily stooped to grab my test.
He smiled and said, "I'm looking forward to reading your essay," then walked away.
Now, I had to find his "sister." Worse, he knew I was Folk.